Standards For JISC's Development Programmes: Implications For Institutions

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Standards For JISC's Development
ProgrammesImplications For Institutions
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• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
UKOLN is supported by
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonComme
rcial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)
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Contents

• This brief talk will cover
• Standards are great ?
• Standards don't always work ?
• Layered approach developed by QA Focus
• Application to JISC development programmes
• Application for you
• Feedback

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Open Standards Are Great

• JISC's development programmes
• Traditionally based on use of open standards to
• Support interoperability
• Maximise accessibility
• Avoid vendor lock-in
• Provide architectural integrity
• Help ensure long-term preservation
• History in UK HE development work
• eLib Standards document (v1 1996, v2 1998)
• DNER Standards document (2001)
• which influenced
• NOF-digi Technical Standards

Open Standards
Note that open standards have an important role
to play in the development of JISC's E-Framework
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But Don't Always Work

• There's a need for flexibility
• Learning the lesson from OSI networking protocols
• Today
• Is the Web (for example) becoming over-complex
• "Web service considered harmful"
• The lowercase semantic web / Microformats
• Lighter-weight alternatives being developed
• Responses from the commercial world

Open Standards

• Other key issues
• What is an open standard?
• What are the resource implications of using them?
• Sometimes proprietary solutions work (and users
  like them). Is it politically incorrect to
  mention this!?

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What is An Open Standard?

• Which of the following are open standards?
• PDF ? Flash
• Java ? MS Word

Open Standards
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Compliance Issues
Compliance

• What does must mean?
• You must comply with HTML standards
• What if I don't?
• What if nobody does?
• What if I use PDF?
• You must clear rights on all resources you
  digitise
• You must provide properly audited accounts
• What if I don't?

JISC 5/99 programme 80 of project home pages
were not HTML compliant
There is a need to clarify the meaning of must
and for an understandable, realistic and
reasonable compliance regime
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The Context

• There will be a context to use of standards
• The intended use
• Mainstream ? Innovative / research
• Key middleware component ? Small-scale
  deliverable
• Organisational culture
• HE vs FE ? Teaching vs Research
• Service vs Development ?
• Available Funding Resources
• Significant funding training to use new
  standards
• Minimal funding - current skills should be used

Contextual Issues
An open standards culture is being developed,
which is supportive of use of open standards, but
which recognises the complexities and can avoid
mistakes made in the past
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The Layered Standards Model
Owner
JISC
3rd Parties
Context Compliance
JISC / project
External
Self assessment
Learning
Penalties
JISC's layered standards model, developed by
UKOLN. Note that one size doesn't always fit all
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Implementation

• How might this approach be used in practice?

Contextual Model
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The Standards Catalogue

• The information provided aims to be simple and
  succinct (but document will still be large when
  printed!)

• Standard Dublin Core
• About the Standard Dublin Core is a metadata
  standard made up
• Version New terms are regularly added to
• Maturity Dublin Core has its origins in
  workshops held
• Risk Assessment Dublin Core plays a key role .
  It is an important standard within the context of
  JISC development programmes.
• Further Information
• DCMI, lthttp//dublincore.org/gt
• Author Pete Johnston, UKOLN
• Contributor
• Date Created 04 Oct 2005
• Update History Initial version.

Example
Note that as the standards catalogue is intended
for wide use the contents will need to be fairly
general
Note recent feedback has identified the need for
heading on usage in other programmes (i.e.
political acceptance)
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Standards Catalogue Process
Feedback

• There's a need for developing and enhancing the
  standards catalogue in order to
• Update with new standards
• Learn from feedback and experiences

Review
Standards
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Sustainability

• How do we
• Sustain, maintain grow the standards catalogue?
• Develop a sustainable support infrastructure?
• Suggestions
• More resources for support infrastructure
• Extend model to related areas to gain buy-in, etc
• Exploit learning gained by projects, reuse
  experiences, encourage sharing, etc.
• Build on QA Focus approach (briefing docs and
  case studies)
• Contractual requirement for projects to produce
  end-user deliverables and deliverables related to
  development process

Sustainability
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Support Infrastructure (1)
Support

• Opportunity to exploit deliverables from
  JISC-funded QA Focus project
• 90 briefing documents 30 case studies
• Licensed (where possible) under Creative Commons
• UKOLN are continuing to publish new documents
  (documents on Folksonomies, AJAX, Podcasting,
  Wikis, etc. published recently)

• Case Study Template
• About the Project
• Area covered
• Approach taken
• Lessons Learnt / Things We'd Do Differently

• Case studies
• Opportunity to describe experiences in specific
  areas
• Standard template to ensure consistency provide
  focus
• Allows UKOLN to promote projects' work ?
• Project get better Google rating ?

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Support Infrastructure (2)
Support

• How others can contribute (projects third
  parties)
• Case Studies
• On way home use template to summarise one aspect
  of your development work and send to me
• Briefing Documents
• Write a (brief!) briefing paper on area not
  currently covered and send to me

• Why?
• Others (e.g. me) can cite your work
• Use of a CC licence enables you, your work, your
  organisation, to become known in other sectors
  you can benefit from this
• You will be seen to be good JISC citizens
• You may get the 'feel good' factor it's not
  just open source software developers who can
  share their work
• You can benefit from our work .. so it would be
  good if we can benefit from yours

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Support Infrastructure (3)
Support

• How do we integrate the standards catalogue with
  implementation experiences, etc.
• Linking to related information in Wikipedia (the
  world can help the updating)
• Uploading information to Wikipedia the wider
  community can help to update and maintain it
• Making information available with CC licences
  so others can use it, update it and hopefully
  give feedback on enhancements
• Use of syndication technologies (RSS OPML)

• Note this is a Web 2.0 approach
• Uses Web 2.0 syndication technologies
• Trusts users and benefits from a wide user base
• Contributes to Web 2.0 services

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Syndicating Content

• Note importance of (a) RSS and OPML (b) modular
  approach and (c) Creative Commons licence to
  maximise use reuse of 90 briefing documents

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Conclusions

• To conclude
• Open standards are important for large-scale
  development work
• It is therefore important to have a pragmatic
  approach and not hide behind dogma
• The contextual approach
• Allows scope to address complexities of
  technologies deployment environments etc.
• Best deployed within a supportive open standards
  culture
• Can be extended to other relevant areas
• We can (and should) be making use of Creative
  Commons (or similar) licences to open access to
  standards information support materials etc.

Conclusions
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Your Feedback
Feedback

• Your feedback is welcomed
• Is this approach of use within your institutional
  development work
• If you are a JISC developer, do you have any
  comments on the approach?
• Are the support materials likely to be of use to
  you?
• How likely are you to contribute to the support
  materials?